A Brief and Selected History of Translations of Utopia Into German

“The World Begins in Man”:

A Brief and Selected History of Translations of Utopia into German

Author: Nicole Pohl

This article traces the translation history of Thomas More’s Utopia into German from the

first seventeenth-century translations to the translations and reception of Utopia in the

GDR and re-united Germany.

In 1516, Thomas More, adviser to King Henry VIII, Catholic, martyr, and saint,

published his most controversial book, De optimo reipublicae statu deque noval insula

Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus (Of the best state law and of the new island Utopia, truly a golden booklet, as beneficial as it is cheerful). During 2016, special issues of Utopian Studies (27, no. 2, and 27, no. 3), edited by Fátima Vieira, have been tracing the translation history of this book that still grips our attention five hundred years later. As in the translation (and reception) histories in all countries, Utopia’s translation in Germany reflects contemporaneous social and political debates and anxieties. Thus, the book was read and translated as a communist document avant la lettre, a contradictory Catholic satire, a fantastical and thus ineffectual blueprint, and a socialist prophecy.

In the seventeenth century, Utopia was translated not only into German but into

the vernacular (albeit abbreviated). Other translations (by Gregor Wintermonath, for instance) published Utopia with Joseph Hall’s antipodean satire, Mundus alter et idem

sive Terra Australis antehac semper incognita; Longis itineribus peregrini Academici

1 nuperrime illustrata (The discovery of a new world, or, A description of the South Indies, hitherto unknown/by an English Mercury) (1605). These latter editions are particularly important for the reception of Utopia as the foundation of a literary genre. Indeed,

Hölscher reminds us that the first mention of “utopia” in German occurred before 1526 and directly linked the text to the literary tradition of “Schlaraffenland,” the medieval poem of the Land of Cockaygne: “Utopien ist ein erdichtetes Land, das der Engländer

Thomas Morus, als wirklich vorhanden, beschrieben hat, und welches ungefähr die Stelle des Schlaraffenlandes vertritt” [Utopia is an imaginary country, which the Englishman

Thomas More described as if it were real, and it has roughly the same status as the term

Schlaraffenland].1 The Land of Cockaygne was not an isolated poem but a tradition of poems across Europe, dealing with an imaginary paradise where leisure prevailed and food was freely obtainable.2 The word utopia appeared again in German encyclopedias, first in 1741, equating Utopia anew to the chimeric “Tale of the Land of Milk and honey” or “Nowhere-land.”3 At first sight, the affinity between Utopia and “Schlaraffenland,” or the “Land of Cockaygne,” lies in the element of wish fulfillment and cornucopia, and

Hölscher’s etymological research seems to confirm this. Thus, Ruth Levitas included the

Land of Cockaygne in her category of “compensatory utopias,” which seek to counterweigh historical experiences of scarcity and deprivation.4 In the same vein, Lewis

Mumford includes it in his idea of “utopias of escape.”5 Recently, following Christopher

Kendrick’s cue, Karma Lochrie has argued for a closer judicious reading of The Land of

Cockaygne as a complex and critical influence on Thomas More:6 “Utopian wish- fulfillment is bound up with a desire that is both unsatisfied and acutely aware of its own dissatisfaction. I would argue that the Land of Cokaygne is guilty of this kind of wish-

2 fulfillment, in which a reality principle asserts itself, not so much in order to accumulate

obstacles that might realistically be overcome, as to pose the contradictory nature of the

utopian project itself. Cokaygne is the representation of a desire that is at the same time

fully cognizant of the impediments to its fulfillment.”7 Perhaps the translation history of

More’s Utopia documents this ambivalence.

The first German translation from Latin into vernacular German was published

anonymously by Claudius Cantiuncula (Claude Chansonnette, ca. 1490–1549) in 1524,

the year when he left his post as syndic of the Council of Basel. Cantiuncula was a dedicated humanist. He translated and corresponded with his friend Erasmus and exchanged letters with More, Joan Luis Vives, C. Agrippa of Nettesheim, and

Brassicanus. He was also a judiciary and political reformer and writer.8 Cantiuncula’s

translation, Von der wunderbarlichen Innsel, Utopia genannt, das ander Buch . . .

Thomam Morũ . . . erstlich zů Latin gar kürtzlich beschriben und ußgelegt (About the

wondrous Island called Utopia, the other book . . . Thomas Morrus . . . recently first

published and explored in Latin) was published in Basel by Johannes Bebel, a printer

specializing in Latin and Greek authors and medical works. He translated only book II of

Utopia and dedicated it to the mayor and Council of Basel.9 Committed to humanist

reforms of the judiciary, Cantiuncula rejected book 1 of More’s Utopia as irrelevant to

his purposes. Indeed, he saw Utopia as a handbook or “mirror for princes”

(Fürstenspiegel), another early form of political utopia, and gave it as a quasi-farewell

gift to the municipal government of Basel, which he perceived as dangerously radicalized

by the Reformation movement.10 Kiesel also suggested that the either short summary or

3 complete omission of book 1 in German translations indicated a focus on the “utopian”

content rather than a sociopolitical critique of European courts and their politics.11

Gregor Wintermonath’s translation of Utopia appeared in 1612, with additional

editions in 1704 and 1730, and at times was complemented by Joseph Hall’s Mundus

alter et idem.12 Similarly to Cantiuncula’s, the translation had a political undertone. As a

translator, historian, and devout Calvinist, Wintermonath seemed skeptical of More’s

utopian idealism. When his translation of Hall’s Mundus alter et idem appeared as

Utopiae pars II in 1613, he seemed to underscore “men’s failings instead of their dreams.”13

The curious imprint Marteau, which published political authors such as Pufendorf

and Paul Jacob Marperger, printed Utopia, Oder Entwurff Einer Paradigmatischen

Policey: Wodurch Die Hohe Obrigkeit Recht Mächtig/Die Spaltungen/Gerichts-

Zänckereyen/Böse Artzeneyen/Ungleicher Vortheil Im Handel . . . Gestillet/Gold Und

Silber Fast Unnöthig Gemacht/Der Staat Starck/Reich Vergnü gt . . . Und . . . Fast Ein

Güldenes Seculum Wiedergebracht Wird (Utopia, or the Blueprint of a paradigmatic

Policy: By which high Authority, Law, Power, Divisionism, juridical discord, injurious medicines, unequal advantage in trade will be pacified and a strong rich and happy State and almost a Golden Age will be restored) in possibly 1700.14 Its title, interestingly,

indicated a pragmatic approach to issues such as discord, inequality, and the abuse of

state power—a typically praxis-oriented slant on political science but promising, at the

same time, a return to the golden age (Güldenes Seculum).15 Though Hölscher still records for the eighteenth century an understanding of Utopia as illusory and abstract, it

4 seems that political science in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries embraced the

ability of utopian discourse to focus the imagination toward the pragmatic.

A freely translated edition followed in 1753, by J.B.K., Das Englischen Canzlers

Thomas Morus Utopien. In einer neuen und freyen Übersetzung (The English Chancellor

Thomas More’s “Utopia.” In a new and free Translation), one that Karl Kautsky

deplored as “very free and very naive” but at least publishing both books of the original

text.16 Hermann Kothe’s 1846 translation found equal condemnation with Kautsky, who

insisted that Kothe not only translated the work from French (this is not verified) but misunderstood and mistranslated many phrases and paragraphs so that the text was riddled with inaccuracies.17 Kothe’s free translation somewhat fed into the understanding

of Utopia in the decade before 1848 when polemical names were used for “the false

convictions of any political opponent,” endorsed by the lexical definition of Utopist of

1847 as fantastical:18 “Politicians and social reformers who leave the realm of reality and

busy themselves with fantastical plans to improve the world have recently been described

as utopian thinkers.”19

From the late nineteenth century, More’s Utopia was received in the intellectual and political context of the utopian socialists, and further publications and translations were initiated by German socialists, often under the auspices of Karl Johann Kautsky

(1854–1938), the Marxist theoretician, philosopher, and journalist who read Thomas

More as a precursor to utopian socialism in his book Thomas More und seine Utopie

(Thomas More and his “Utopia”) (1888). The next translation was published by Victor

Michels and Theobald Ziegler, providing the basis for a later edition by Gerhard Ritter.20

This critical edition of the Utopia was one in a collection of reprints of the important

5 Latin compositions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Lateinische

Literaturdenkmäler des fünfzehnten und sechszehnten Jahrhunderts, edited by Max

Hermann, and was extolled by Kautsky as “magnificent.”

Ignaz Emanuel Wessely, translator and lexicographer, translated and annotated

More’s Utopia in 1896 and issued it with a publisher specializing in the social sciences.21

Therefore, More’s Utopia was swiftly integrated into the socialist canon. This was

underscored by the fact that Eduard Fuchs, the Marxist cultural historian, activist,

pacifist, and satirist, wrote the preface to this edition.22 As editor of the satiric weekly

Süddeutscher Postillon (South German Forerunner) and the socialist newspaper

Vorwärts (Forward), Fuchs was particularly interested in satirical caricature as a means of political critique and transformation: “In 1830, when the French bourgeois state was supposed, finally, to have developed from a fiction to a reality, and where, for this reason, the people [Volk] everywhere wanted and had to speak for themselves, the picture was most needed as a means of propaganda. . . . [T]he image is one of the most important intellectual tools in the struggle of revolutionary classes and times.”23

Fuchs was also inspired by Kautsky’s work, Thomas More und seine Utopie, and

composed his lengthy preface to Utopia carefully. Unfortunately, the actual translation by

Wessely was slated, particularly by Fuchs’s comrades from Vorwärts and the

Süddeutscher Postillon. The anonymous critic in Vorwärts suggested that Fuchs’s preface was a mere compilation of Kautsky and Ziegler and that More’s work deserved rigorous editing and shortening to make it inexpensive.24 Fuchs responded quickly in the Postillon that the translation of More’s complete text, not distorted and abbreviated like so many previous German translations, and the five original illustrations added value to the

6 edition.25 Despite this criticism, Wessely’s translation resurfaced again in 1945, and a

selection of passages from More appeared in an anthology in 1945–46.26

The Marxist pedagogue and educational reformer Paul Hermann August

Oestreich (1878–1959) contributed to a multivolume project, Dokumente der

Menschlichkeit (Documents of Humanity), in 1919.27 His four volumes reprinted

selections from More, Campanella, Blanc, Fourier, Cabet, and Weitling, highlighting the work of the utopian socialists and their forebears and complementing the overall blueprint of the volumes as a critical reflection on political and social orders and systems.28 The preface by the publishers of the collection, which also featured Kant,

Fichte, Swift, Claudius, Forster, and the utopian socialists, highlighted the educational

and transformatory purpose of the documents, including Thomas More: “‘Die Welt fängt

im Menschen an’—unter dem Zeichen dieses Dichterwortes steht unsere Bücherei. Sie

sammelt Zeugen für die Verwirklichung des Guten—die Führer und Lehrer menschlicher

Erhebung als Mithelfer am Neubau der Welt” [“The world begins in man”—this poetic

citation is the foundation of our library. It collects witnesses for the realization of the

morally Good—the guides and teachers of human elatedness as aids to the rebuilding of

the world].29 One of the criticisms of previous translations of Utopia was the quality of the translation and the completeness of the text. Tony Noah’s translation of 1920, Utopia, went back to the original Latin, and her introduction presented a brief but well-informed

biography of Thomas More, which was received positively in the socialist periodical Die

Neue Zeit, edited by Kautsky.30

Post–World War I German translations were particularly critical of More’s

work as an example of British liberal justification of colonialism and imperialism. The

7 historian Gerhard Ritter published another translation of Utopia in 1922, with a preface

by his teacher the historian Hermann Oncken.31 It was based on the critical edition by

Michels and Ziegler. Ritter took More’s Utopia at face value, ignoring the satirical form

of the book, and read it as a document of imperialism, an interpretation that Ritter

initially shared with Oncken.32 Ritter’s later work Machtstaat und Utopie (Power State and Utopia) (1940) revised this reading and focused on the aspect of the welfare state in

Utopia.33 Utopia found also a way into Swiss culture and literature. The Swiss translator

and editor Alfred Hartmann published a new translation of Utopia in 1947, with further

reprints in 1981 and 1986, and a short biography of Erasmus. 34

The translation by Hubert Schiel, a librarian and ecclesiastical historian, sought to

revise particularly the “socialist” slant that late nineteenth-century editions and

translations promoted. As a Catholic, Schiel struggled with the ambivalence in the text

between Christian principles and early socialism avant la lettre, stating that we do not

know how far More’s satire went: “[Der] kirchentreue Christ bei der Schrift dieses

katholischen Heiligen mit mehr oder weniger verlegenem Kopfschütteln . . . [sich]

behelfen muss” [The faithful Christian is forced to shake his head in embarrassment

when reading the writing of this Catholic saint].35

With the creation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the term utopia

and consequently translations of the original text by More were scrutinized under the lens

of “real socialism.” The self-fashioning of the GDR as a “realized utopia” challenged the necessity of the term and concept of utopia; however, writers used the term as a form of political critique of the socialist regime of the GDR (“dark utopias”) or as motivation to

8 implement state socialism fully and consistently.36 In the latter vein, More’s Utopia and

the contemporary Civitas Solis were frequently hailed as precursors of utopian

communism. The classical philologist Curt Woyte newly translated Utopia for his

Leipzig edition in 1949, the year of the foundation of the GDR (with reprints in 1950 and

1982) based on 37 An English edition based on the Ralph Robinson translation was

published in 1955, with a German commentary by the East German scholar Joachim

Krehayn.38 Here as well as in his edition of Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Krehayn spoke

critically of abstract utopianism and highlighted the role of real socialism as the only

logical and historical consequence of utopian socialism.39

One of the problems after 1989 was that utopia was quite carelessly equated, on

the one hand, with ideology and, on the other, with a specific model of utopia: the

classical utopia in the vein of Thomas More. Fukuyama declared the “end of history” and the beginning of a “concert of democracies” or post-utopian realism.40 In Germany, it

was the historian Joachim Fest who declared the end of utopia in 1991 after the fall of the

Berlin Wall, aligning Utopia and the Third Reich to failed utopian experiments that must

never be repeated.41 We must, however, acknowledge that utopias were written after

1989, integrating, in the case of Germany and Central Europe, the reinvention and

creation of new nation-states.42 Thus translations and new editions of Utopia were

published after 1989, with reprints and/or reworkings of Kothe’s, Ritter’s, and Schiel’s

translations.

The most recent translation into modern German was published by the translator

and fantasy writer Michael Siefener, Utopia: Die erste literarische Utopie der Neuzeit

(Utopia: The First Literary Utopia of the Early Modern Period) (2013), based on Ralph

9 Robinson’s translation. The project of a more colloquial translation aims to introduce

modern general readers to the book and inspire them to critical reimaginings of

“contemporary turbo-capitalism” (gegenwärtigen Turbokapitalismus).43 Thus, far from

being a mere historical document, Utopia has maintained its function as a (albeit

paradoxical) critical, inspirational, and transformatory text for five hundred years.

Notes

The quote in the title is from Franz Werfel, “Lächeln Atmen Schreiten”: “Die Welt fängt im Menschen an.” In this essay I refer to a selection of translations that are significant in the translation/reception history of Utopia. For a list of complete translations into

German, see Anreas Heyer, Sozialutopien der Neuzeit: Bibliographisches Handbuch

(Berlin: Lit, 2008); Romuald I. Lakowski, “A Bibliography of Thomas More’s Utopia,”

Early Modern Literary Studies 1, no. 2 (1995): 6.1–6.10,

1. Lucian Hölscher, “Utopie,” Utopian Studies 7, no. 2 (1996): 1–65, at 5.

2. This idea of Cockaygne and cornucopia was then perpetuated in the English country house myth; see Nicole Pohl, Women, Space, and Utopia, 1600–1800 (Aldershot:

Ashgate, 2006), chap. 3.

3. Hölscher, “Utopie,” 3–4.

4. Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,

1990), 190.

5. Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: Viking, 1962).

6. Christopher Kendrick, Utopia, Carnival, and Commonwealth in Renaissance

England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Karma Lochrie, Nowhere in the

Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), chap. 2. See also

Thomas Betteridge, Writing Faith and Telling Tales: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work of Thomas More (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013).

7. Lochrie, Nowhere in the Middle Ages, 52.

8. Guido Kisch, Claudius Cantiuncula. Ein Basler Jurist und Humanist des 16.

Jahrhunderts [Claudius Cantiuncula: A sixteenth-century Basel jurist and humanist]

(Basel: Helbing und Lichtenhahn, 1970).

9. “Denn Edlen, Strengen, Frommen, Besten, Fürsichtigen, Ersamen Wysenherrn,

Adelberg Meyer, Burgermeister und dem Rat der loblichen Statt Basel minen gnedigen

und günstigen Herren.” In Von der wunderbarlichen Innsel, Utopia genannt, das ander

Buch . . . Thomam Morũ . . . erstlich zů Latin gar kürtzlich beschriben und ußgelegt/aus

d. Lat. übers. von Claud. Cantiuncula von Metz (gedruckt zu Basel durch Joannem

Bebelii. Jm M D. XXIIII. jar am sechtzehenden tag des Brachmons) [About the wondrous

Island called Utopia, the other book . . . Thomas Morrus . . . recently first published and

explored in Latin] (1524).

10. “Diewyl nun dise policy der Innsel Utopia, wie oben angezeigt die

bastgeordnete ältiste und bestendlichste yewelten gewesen und noch seyn soll, so von den

mennschen ye angesehn worden, hab’ ich darumb die histori sollicher Innsel Edlen,

Strengen, Ersamen Wysenherrn als waren liebhabern aller recht uffgesetzten policyen

und burgerlichen Regiments, zu einem pfand (der Dankbarkeit), wie obanzeygt, uß der

latinischen in die tütsche sprach, so ich in diser loblichen Statt Basel gelernet,

transferieren wöllen.” [As the policy of the island Utopia, as shown above, had been the

oldest and significant world and still is, according to readers, I wanted to dedicate the

11 history of such an Island with the honorable, strict, and praiseworthy wise men who are all lovers of rightful policy and council government, with great thanks as indicated above translated from Latin into German as I learned it in the righteous city of Basel]. Ibid., sig

A5r.

Berns suggested that the law of the German Empire was influenced by

Cantiuncula’s interpretation of More’s “res publica” as “policy,” as is also evident in the above quotation. See J. J. Berns, “Utopie und Polizei: Zur Funktionsgeschichte der frühen

Utopistik in Deutschland,” in Literarische Utopie-Entwürfe, ed. Hildrud Gnüg (Frankfurt:

Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982), 101–16, at 101.. On the Reformation in Basel, see Amy Nelson

Burnett, “The Reformation in Basel,” in A Companion to the Swiss Reformation, ed. Amy

N. Burnett and Emidio Campi (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 170-215..

11. Helmuth Kiesel, “Bei Hof, Bei Höll”: Untersuchung zur Literarischen

Hofkritik von Sebastian Brant bis Friedrich Schiller (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979), 61–66.

12. De optimo reipublicae statu, libellus verè aureus. Ordentliche vnd außführliche Beschreibung der Der überaus herrlichen und ganz wunderbarlichen/doch wenigen bißhero bekandten Insul Utopia [Exact and detailed description of the quite magnificent and really wonderful/but not very known island Utopia], trans.

Smdygmxirnhdrh Mxisofm [Utopian letters: Gregor[ius] Wintermonat] (Leipzig: Michael

Lantzenberger, in verlegung Henning Grossen des Jüngern, 1612). Another edition from

1704 was bound with Hall’s Mundus alter et idem: Gregor Wintermonath, Ordentliche und Außführliche Beschreibung Der überaus herrlichen, und gantz wunderbahrlichen, doch wenigen Bißhero bekandten Insul Utopia: sambt umständl. Erzehlung aller deroselben Gelegenheiten, Städten, d. Einwohner u.d. Landes Sitten, Gewonheiten u.

Gebräuchen, darinnen gleichsam in e. Muster oder Model eigentl. fuürgestellet u.

angezeiget wird, d. beste Weiß u. Art e. loöbl. u. wolbestelten Policey u. Regiments.

Beschrieben durch den hochgelahrten und welt-berühmten Herrn Thomam Morum . . .

Mit vielen chönen Kupfferstücken und Land-Beschreibungen . . . [Exact and detailed

description of the quite magnificent and really wonderful/but not very known island

Utopia: including a complete account of all incidents, cities, inhabitants and customs,

traditions and practices including the wisest, laudable and consistent policy and rule.

Described by the eminent and world-famous the Honorable Thomas Morus . . . with

many beautiful prints and geographic descriptions] (Frankfurt am Main: verlegt in

Henning Grossens Buchhandlung, 1704); and Thomas More and Alberici Gentilis Angli

[Joseph Hall], Ausführliche Beschreibuung der Insul Utopia, worinnen so wohl die uüberaus herrlichen und gantz wunderbahrlichen Umstünde dieser bisshero wenigen bekandten Insul als auch aller deroselben Gelegenheiten, Städten, der Einwohner und des Landes Sitten, Gewohnheiten und Gebräuchen angezeiget, zugleich aber die beste Art und Weise eines löblichen und wohl-bestellten Policey- und Regiments-Wesen ausführlich vorgestellet wird . . . Erster Theil [Exact and detailed description of the quite magnificent and really wonderful/but not very known island Utopia: including a complete account of all incidents, cities, inhabitants and customs, traditions and practices including the wisest, laudable and consistent policy and rule. Described by the eminent and world- famous the Honorable Thomas Morus . . . with many beautiful prints and geographic descriptions, pt. 1], 2 vols. (Erfurt and Leipzig, 1730).

13. Joseph Hall and Alberico Gentili and Gregorius Wintermonat, Utopiae pars

II. Mundus alter & idem: Darinnen außführlich und nach notturfft erzelet wird, was die

13 alte numehr bald sechstausendjährige Welt für eine newe Welt geboren . . . Erstlich in lateinischer Sprach gestellt durch den . . . Herrn Albericum Gentilem in Engelland: nun aber . . . verteutscht . . . durch [Gregorium Hyemsmensium] [Mundus alter et idem: A detailed account for the general good how an old, now nearly six-thousand-year-old world create a new world . . . Originally composed in Latin by Albericum Gentillem from

England but now translated into German by [Gregorium Hyemsmensium]] (Leipzig:

Gedruckt in Verlegung H. Grossen des Jungern, 1613); Richard A. McCabe, review of

Another World and Yet the Same. Bishop Joseph Hall’s “Mundus alter et idem,” translated and edited by John Millar Wands, Review of English Studies 35, no. 139

(1984): 373–75. However, the 1643 publication of Mundus alter et idem by Joannes

Waesbergius in Utrecht was printed with Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627) and Campanella’s

La città del Sole (1602, published in Latin in Frankfurt in 1623). See Werner Koppenfels,

Der andere Blick oder Das Vermächtnis des Menippos: Paradoxe Perspektiven in der

Europäischen Literatur (Munich: Beck, 2007), 139.

14. Karl K. Walther, Die Deutschsprachige Verlagsproduktion von Pierre

Marteau/Peter Hammer, Köln: Zur Geschichte Eines Fingierten Impressums (Leipzig:

VEB Bibliogr. Inst, 1983); W. Schäfke, “Pierre Marteau, ein Kölner Drucker, den es nie gab,” Museen in Köln. Bulletin 15, no. 4 (1976): 1422–23; P. Mori Beatior, Utopia, Oder

Entwurff Einer Paradigmatischen Policey: Wodurch Die Hohe Obrigkeit Recht

Mächtig/Die Spaltungen/Gerichts-Zänckereyen/Böse Artzeneyen/Ungleicher Vortheil Im

Handel . . . Gestillet/Gold Und Silber Fast Unnöthig Gemacht/Der Staat Starck/Reich

Vergnügt . . . Und . . . Fast Ein Güldenes Seculum Wiedergebracht Wird [Utopia, or the

Blueprint of a paradigmatic Policy: By which high Authority, Law, Power, Divisionism,

14 juridical discord, injurious medicines, unequal advantage in trade will be pacified and a strong rich and happy State and almost a Golden Age will be restored] (Cölln, Germany:

Marteau, 1700).

15. On eighteenth-century political science, see Thomas Ellwein,

“Staatswissenschaftliche Tradition,” in Politikwissenschaft: Lehre und Studium Zwischen

Professionalisierung und Wissenschaftsimmanenz. Eine Bestandsaufnahme und ein

Symposium, ed. Hans-Herman Hartwich (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für

Sozialwissenschaften, 1987), 65–80.

16. J.B.K., trans., Das Englischen Canzlers Thomas Morus Utopien. In einer neuen und freyen. Übersetzung von J.B.K. [The English chancellor Thomas Morus’s

Utopia. In a new and free Translation by J.B.K.] (Frankfurt: bei Heinrich Ludwig

Brönner, 1753); Karl Kautsky, Thomas More und seine Utopie [Thomas More and his

Utopia] (Stuttgart: Dietz 1907), 245.

17. Hermann Kothe and Thomas More, Thomas Morus und sein berühmtes Werk

Utopia. Aus dem Englischen übersetzt von Hermann Kothe [Thomas More and his famous work Utopia. Translated from English by Hermann Kothe], ed. Eduard Maria

Oettinger (Leipzig: Universal Bibliothek, 1846).

18. Hölscher, “Utopie,” 5.

19. “In neuerer Zeit belegt man die Politiker und Socialreformer, welch den

Boden der Wiklichkeit verlieren und sich mit phantastischen Welverbesserungsplänen beschäftigen, mit den Namen der Utopisten.” Brockhaus, 9th ed. (1847), quoted in ibid.,

20. Thomas Morus, Utopia, ed. Victor Michels and Theobald Ziegler (Berlin:

Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1895). For a critical review of this translation, see James

Gairdner, review of The Utopia of Sir Thomas More by J. H. Lupton and Thomas Morus

Utopia by Victor Michels and Theobald Ziegler, English Historical Review 11, no. 42

(1896): 369–71.

21. Wessely also translated Campanella’s City of the Sun (1900). The publisher was M. Ernst, Verlag für Gesellschaftswissenschaft, Munich.

22. Thomas Morus, Utopia: mit 5 phototyp. Nachbildungen und dem Bildniß d.

Thomas Morus. Uebersetzt und mit sachlichen Anmerkungen versehen von Ignaz

Emanuel Wessels. Vorwort von Eduard Fuchs [Utopia: with five prints and an engraving of Thomas More. Translated and annotated by Ignaz Emanuel Wessels. Preface by

Eduard Fuchs] (Munich: Ernst, 1896). On Fuchs, see Walter Benjamin and Tarnowski

Knut, “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian,” New German Critique 5 (1975): 27–58.

23. Eduard Fuchs, ed., Honoré Daumier: Lithographien 1828–1851 (Munich: A.

Langen, 1927), 30.

24. Thomas Huonker, Revolution, Moral und Kunst: Eduard Fuchs, Leben und

Werk (Zurich: Limmat Verlag Genossenschaft, 1985), 300–304.

25. Quoted in ibid., 303.

26. Thomas Morus, Thomas Morus: “Utopia,” selected and intro. by Laurenz

Wiedner, selected from the translation by Ignaz Emanuel Wessely, Der Staat als Utopie

(Zurich: Pegasus Verlag, 1945).

27. Paul Oestreich, ed., Utopia: Eine Auswahl. Dokumente der Menschlichkeit

(Munich: Dreiländer, 1919).

28. Monika Estermann and Ursula Rautenberg, Im Auftrag der Historischen

Kommission des Börsenvereins des Deutschen Buchhandels E.v. (Berlin: De Gruyter,

2009), 189.

29. Oestreich, Utopia, my translation

30. Thomas More, Utopia. Aus dem Urtext ins Deutsche übersetzt und eingeleitet von Tony Noah [Utopia. Translated from the original into German and introduced by

Tony Noah] (Zurich: Rascher, 1920); Die Neue Zeit 39, no. 2 (1921): 216.

31. On Ritter, see Peter Paret, “Gerhard Ritter, 1888–1967,” Central European

History 1, no. 1 (1968): 100–102; Gerhard Ritter and Thomas More, Utopia, intro. by

Hermann Oncken, Klassiker der Politik, ed. Friedrich Meinecke and Hermann Oncken

(Berlin: R. Hobbing, 1922; repr., Stuttgart: Reclam-Verlag, 1964, 1983, 2003).

32. Hermann Oncken, “Die Utopia des Thomas Morus und das Machtproblem in der Staatslehre,” in Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften (Heidelberg: Carl

Winter Verlag, 1922; Michael Matthiesen, “Machtstaat und Utopia,” in

Nationalsozialismus in den Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Hartmut Lehmann, Otto G. Oexle,

Michael Matthiesen, and Martial Stau (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2004),

165–98, at 168, 171; Richard Saage, “Morus’ ‘Utopia’ und die Macht. Zu Hermann

Onckens und Gerhard Ritters Utopia-Interpretationen,” UTOPIE kreativ 183 (January

2006): 37–47.

33. Gerhard Ritter, Machtstaat und Utopie (Munich: Oldenburg, 1940) [

34Thomas Morus, Utopia. Aus dem Lateinischen übersetzt von Alfred Hartmann

(Basel: Birkhäuser, 1947; repr., Zurich: Diogenes, 1981, 1986). Hartmann also

translated Erasmus’s Praise of Folly.

35. Thomas Morus, Thomas Morus: “Utopia,” ed. Hubert Schiel and Alexander

Heine (Essen: Phaidon-Verlag, 1997), 17; my translation. See also Des Heiligen Thomas

Morus Utopia das ist Nirgendland oder Von der besten Staatsform—Übertragen und

eingeleitet von Hubert Schiel [Saint Thomas More’s Utopia which is Nowhere; or, Of the

best state—translated and introduced by Hubert Schiel[AQ: INSERTION

CORRECT?]] YEs (Cologne: Pick, 1947).

36. See Matthias Vorhauer, Zwischen Perspektivbewußtsein und Systemkritik—

Science-Fiction-Literatur in der DDR (Munich: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2009); Jens Ebert,

“Saiäns Fiktschen statt Science Fiction: Franz Fühmann,” in Utopie, Antiutopie und

Science Fiction im deutschsprachigen Roman des 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Hans Esselborn

(Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2003), 150–57; Stefan Wolle, Die heile Welt

der Diktatur. Aufbruch nach Utopia: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1961–1971

(Berlin: Links, 2011).

37. Thomas Morus, Utopia, Aus dem Lateinischen von Curt WoyteUtopia,

translated from Latin by Curt Woyte”?](Leipzig: Verlag Philip Reclam, 1949; repr.,

1950, 1982).

Thomas Morus, Utopia, bearbeitet und eingeleitet von Joachim Krehayn (Berlin :

VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1955). 39. Horst Heidtmann, Utopisch-

phantastische Literatur in der DDR: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung eines

Unterhaltungsliterarischen Genres von 1945–1979 (Munich: W. Fink, 1982), 269 n. 44.

40. Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams (New York:

Alfred A. Knopf), 97; Sally Kitch, Higher Ground: From Utopianism to Realism in

American Feminist Thought and Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 9,

1. See also Nicole Pohl, “Utopia Matters,” Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal 7

(2009): 1–14, http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/7484.pdf.

41. Joachim Fest, Der zerstörte Traum: Vom Ende des utopischen Zeitalters

(Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1991); Joachim Fest, Nach dem Scheitern der Utopien:

Gesammelte Essays zu Politik und Geschichte (Reinbek, Germany: Rowohlt Verlag,

2007–9).

42. Helmut Böttiger, Nach den Utopien (Munich: Hanser Verlag, 2004); Rudolf

Maresch and Florian Rötzer, eds., Die Renaissance der Utopie: Zukunftsfiguren des 21.

Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004). See also Richard Saage, “Renaissance der Utopie?” UTOPIE kreativ 201/202 (July/August 2007): 605–17.

43. See http://www.verlagshaus- roemerweg.de/Marix_Verlag/Michael_Siefener_(%C3%9Cbers.)_Thomas_Morus-

Utopia-EAN:9783865393135.html; my translation. Thomas Morus, Utopia, trans.

Michael Siefener (Wiesbaden: Marix Verlag, 2013).